Saki’s
stories show an engagement with evolutionary theories and determinism from the
very beginning of his career. The two short stories “Dogged” (1899) and “The
Remoulding of GrobyLington”
(1912) are typical in this respect. Both these works focus on decline because
to Saki, the notion of evolution as a progressive
development is only a delusion. Saki keeps his focus
sharply on the problem of the determined self which is constrained by the
society and the environment of which it is only an insignificant part. This
essay will analyze the two short stories separately, then in part III the two
stories will be compared and discussed in evolutionary aspects.

“Dogged”,[1]Saki’s first published work,
which appeared in an obscure London journal Saint Paul’s in February 1899, centres on the themes of moral degeneration and
theseduction of man by evil. It is
concerned with the existence of evil in the world and man’s capacity for experiencing
guilt. Social and religious thoughts are elaborately disguised in the symbolism
of the story. If the reader is not aware of the symbolic significance, he
may well read and enjoy it as a story about the attachment of a man to his
pet. However, Saki embeds symbolism within his realist
technique to provoke thoughts beyond the confines of the narrative.

The story begins with
the name of Artemus Gibbon, a timid and dull young
man who comes into the possession of a spirited fox-terrier. ‘He went
unsuspectingly to his undoing’ (p.1) when in a church bazaar he is bullied by
an implacable lady into buying the dog:

Here it was that the Foreseen and
Inevitable stepped in and changed the placid

current of his life. He was pounced upon
by a severe-looking dame, with an air of

one being in authority, who gave him to
understand that it was required of him

that he should buy a dog. (p. 1).

He is shocked when he understands that the name of the dog is
Beelzebub, which means devil or Satan, and also reminds one of one of the
fallen angels in Milton’s Paradise Lost. Beelzebub is literally Ba’alZebul, “the Lord of the mansion or high house”, which
refers to the God’s temple or to the mountain on which the gods dwelt. Both
meanings operate in Saki’s story. First, the name
refers to Gibbon’s demonic possession which is explicitly stated in the last
sentence of the story, when his friend asks him: ‘Does it belong to you?’ he
answers: ‘I belong to him, body and soul’ (p.6).Secondly, it is Beelzebub the
dog that is the Lord of the house. Vatter, in The
Devil in English Literature, writes that Beelzebub, who appears in the
synoptic Gospel, goes back to Phoenician fly-God Baal-zebub.
In the New Testament, his name is already used synonymously with that of the
Devil. Vatter also adds that the etymological
derivation is from either Hebrew ‘zebul’ (habitation)
or ‘zebel’ (filth).[2]
The Hebrew derivation here points towards human habitation which in its broad meaning
can symbolize civilization. Also it refers to habitation of the Lord. The
second derivation, from ‘filth’ points towards the way in which the story shows
moral degeneration.

Artemus
is a name from the history of Christianity. Saint Marcellinus
and Peter were imprisoned and suffered martyrdom about the year 304, but before
their martyrdom they made new converts, including their jailer who was named Arthemius. A situational irony emerges when “Dogged”is
considered in this context. This situational irony refers to the inversion of
power hierarchy. “Dogged” is a conversion story, but Artemus
is converted to his animal nature and set in thrall to the animal kingdom. His
conversion is not a noble change but a base one, indicating a reversal of
traditional values. Saki contrives a blurring of
boundaries between captive and captor by making Beelzebub convert Artemus, therefore reversing the power hierarchy that can
be inferred from history of the name of Artemus.[3]
The full name of the protagonist links the name of a saint with the name of an
animal. Unlike his holy precursor, Saki’sArtemus degenerates towards a base nature rather than
evolving into a figure of transcendence and spirituality. The juxtaposition of
the name of a saint with the name of an animal (Gibbon) creates an ironic
blending of bestiality and spirituality.[4]

Man’s descent from
spiritual to animal is emphasized through a series of contrasts. Gibbon’s
relationship to the dog is more than a sentimental attachment to his pet. He is
enslaved. The story anticipates what becomes a common theme in Saki’s works, the way in which an animal changes the
apparently blameless life of its owner. Before buying the dog, Gibbon is an
innocent, meek young man but Beelzebub, who is tyrannical and has heroic
characteristics, changes his life to dissipation and idleness. The appearance
of the devil in the form of dog is reminiscent of Goethe’s Faust in
which the devil first appears as a black poodle.[5]

There are historical accounts
of dogs who personified the devil, where the animal appearance shows the devil’s
worldliness and the animal nature of demoniac beings; but why is the devil
associated with a dog? According to Ziolkowski:
‘In the middle ages the ancient beliefs were simply translated into Christian
terms. Dogs were attached as a symbol of loyalty to various saints, notably
St. Dominic and Saint Bernard[..….] Popular etymology regards the Dominican
friars as the hounds of God (domini canes)’[6] However, Ziolkowski also
considers associations between dogs and devils, noting, for example, that
dogs have long played a major role in the folklore of power.’[7] Barbara Allen Woods also associates the dog with the devil.
She suggests that men feared that the domesticated dog might revert to the
bestial state from which it had emerged, becoming once again an evil force,
all the more menacing because of its position of trust within the human community.
Thus, in many medieval folktales, the devil assumes the shape of a dog in
order to insinuate himself into human society.[8] The black dogs go under many names depending on which county
they are in. In East Anglia and Norfolk they are called ‘shuck’ which can be traced back to the old English
scucca, meaning Demon.[9] The demon association is sometimes emphasized by the title
“Devil Dog”.[10] Various ancient gods are also associated with dogs, such
as Hekate, Diana and Artemis.[11] The Goddess Artemis is always surrounded by her pack of
hounds. Artemus in “Dogged” can also perhaps be seen asan echo of Artemis, the Greek god of hunting,
wild nature and fertility whose temple at Ephesus served as both a marketplace
and religious institution.[12] Similarly in “Dogged” the church with its bazaaris
both a religious institution and a market place. Like Saki’sArtemus who is everywhere accompanied by his fox-terrier,
Artemis is also ‘accompanied and appeased by dogs.’[13]

A further ironical point
that emerges from disguising the devil as a dog is the fact that dogs are
traditionally very obedient and faithful to humans. Frances and Richard Lockridge write:

It is easy, indeed, to believe that the
dog would very much like to be a man, just

as man would like to make himself over
in the image of God…This canine desire

to do everything the human wishes, to
shape his whole life to human rather to

In “Dogged”, however, it is the dog that is the master and who
forces Gibbon to do as it wishes.

The story is structured
by many binary oppositions. The opposition begins when Gibbon buys a dog. The
spirited, active life of the dog and the dull, tame and passive life of Gibbon
are contrasted. The second binary opposition is between primitive and
civilized.Man’s civilized self is in
contrast with his animal nature. After buying the dog and bringing it to his
house, Gibbon helplessly observes while the dog makes his house chaotic, as
Beelzebub represents devil which is frequently identified with the principle of
chaos, but Saki’s ironic point is that the dog uses
the elements of civilization. He is ‘snugly ensconced in the only armchair’
(p.2) , he settles down in a room furnished ‘in a style of Bohemian
extravagance’ (p.3) and refuses to leave, he jumps into an empty hansom,
refusing to get out, and goes to restaurants. Ironically, the dog adopts the
life style of a typical dandy[15].
It has a dandy’s pretension to freedom from all human commitment and morality.[16]
The reference to bohemianism suggests Saki’s
rejection of bourgeois values. Bohemia and dandyism often merged because they both had a similar carefree,
indolent life style and seemed to belong nowhere in conventional society. They
had a haughty attitude towards bourgeois life. Ada
Clare, known to New York as The Queen of Bohemia, had stated in 1860:

The Bohemian is not, like the creature of
society, a victim of rules and customs;

he steps over them with an easy,
graceful, joyous unconsciousness, guided by the

And Joanna Richardson, referring to Shelley and Byron, defines
Bohemian as having the right ‘to escape the social system, to follow a personal
moral code, to create his own environment, and develop his originality. They
had asserted the right of man to live as he chose.’[18]
The reference to ‘Bohemian’ in “Dogged”marks the beginning of a mocking
attitude towards the bourgeois life and middle class which becomes a recurrent
theme in Saki’s stories.

Many of Saki’s protagonists
are dandies: for example, Reginald who is the main character of two collections
of Saki’s short stories Reginald (1904) and Reginald
in Russia (1910), and ComusBassington
the protagonist of The Unbearable Bassington
(1912). They live a life independent of the values of the middle-class. In
following Beelzebub and living in a room furnished in a style of “Bohemian”
extravagance, Gibbon in “Dogged” also gradually chooses to lead a life outside
the middle-class conventions of the society. Although Gibbon’s change in the
social view is considered a moral degeneration, he is also no longer trapped in
a tedious existence. He is liberated from what is imposed on him by shallow
social norms, which force an individual to lead a hypocritical life. But Saki’s pessimistic nihilism persuades us that although
following instinct is better than yielding to middle-class social norms, no
goodness, order or salvation is possible in a deterministic world. Saki does not believe in the possibility of progress or
growth for mankind. After buying Beelzebub, Gibbon notices that ‘he had started
on a downgrade path that led to no good and peaceful end.’ (p. 2) Beelzebub
‘wears the yawningly alert air of one who has found the world is in vain and
likes it all the better for it’ (p. 2) The nice phrase ‘yawningly alert’ neatly
captures the Dandy’s attitude to life. Both these sentences indicate the
nihilistic pessimism of the narrator. In Saki’s story
the reader is not led to expect any change for better. If there is any change,
it is for the worse.

The unfolding of the
narrative in “Dogged”, in which surprise elements and unexpected events
are generated by the activities of a dog, encourages the reader to relish the
disorder brought about by the dog, rather than the conventional order of
Gibbon’s house. The dog is a threat to civilization and ‘the leading of a
respectable life’ (p. 4), but the reader of Saki’s
story is manipulated into taking sides with the recovery of Gibbon’s animal
dimension. Saki’s characters envy the imperturbable
life of the animals which is free from all restrictions.

The third binary opposition is the opposition
of evil and good. Beelzebub who represents ‘the moral slump of Gibbon’ and has
‘a reputation for naked and unashamed depravity’ (p.2) appears from a religious
context, a church bazaar ‘opened by a bishop’s lady and patronized by the most
hopelessly correct people in the neighbourhood’ (p.1). The phrase ‘hopelessly
correct’ also acts as a pointer to the reader, since it suggests an ironical,
and indeed, subversive attitude towards correctness.

This central opposition
between good and evil develops further ironies. The end of the story inverts
the beginning. Gibbon owns the dog but at the end the dog is the absolute owner
of everything. What appears to be a ‘cataclysm’ (p.2) in the beginning, becomes
trivial at the end. Although Gibbon tries to hide the source of his depravity,
Beelzebub, from the outside world, at the end of the story he confesses: ‘I
belong to him, body and soul’ (p.6) The major opposition of the story thus
reverses traditional values. Keeping pace with the gradual progress of
Beelzebub, Gibbon has to abandon civilized, ethical restrictions. Beelzebub, a
daemonic force, brings reckless vitality into Gibbon’s life, but at the same
time, the final words suggest this as a Faustian pact, he has sold his soul to
the devil. There is a difference between Faust and Gibbon in that Faust eludes
the devil, with whom he has made only a wager, not a pact, whereas Saki’s character, due to his lack of freedom, cannot escape
the Devil. Marlow’s Faustus, too, actually signs a pact, becoming
Devil-worshipper: “To him [Beelzebub] I’ll build an altar and a church” (5,
15). Unlike Dr Faustus who denies his humanity and wishes to be a god, Gibbon,
already an animal through its symbolic name, becomes united with an animal at
the end, sinking lower in the hierarchy of creation and evolutionary theories
that knows man a species in the animal kingdom. Gibbon is neither heroically
defiant, nor terrified and repentant because he is a nihilist.

The story raises serious moral
problems. Furthermore, the narrative withholds closure between opposing
principles. Gibbon is both an animal and a saint. Beelzebub is both Satan and
dog. The story sustains the tension in polar irreconcilable oppositions. Saki forces the reader to ask the question but he withholds
the explicit answer.What Saki does is to create a structure to make the reader
rethink the social norms, to create a puzzle and ask the reader to reinterpret
the events entirely. At the same time, Saki’s irony
has its element of evasion. This is why the story is open at the end. Binary
opposition deliberately results in the lack of narrative closure. The story’s
construction of unresolved conflicts indicates the dilemma resulting from
evolutionary debates and the central puzzle of ethics and evolution. The ironic
balances and oppositions allow the reader to contemplate a full range of
conflicts between ethics and civilization, as well as the conflicting realities
of evolution and ethics.

Unlike Saki’s later stories such as “Tobermory”
(1909)in which there is overt sympathy with animals, in “Dogged” the
focus is on the vulnerability of man. This story is more concerned with the
plight of man in the world and his relation to church and ethics. If Faustus sold
his soul to the Devil and gained power of knowledge, modern man, who is nothing
but an ape, is forced to the purchase of Satan and loses everything. Dr
Faustus surrenders to the temptations of the devil in order to obtain immediate
advantages. His eventual loss is to some extent compensated by these immediate
advantages. Dr Faustus, like any tragic hero, confronts defeat, but his aim
stands high above those factors that defeat him. On the other hand, modern man
has gained nothing. Gibbon has not made a good bargain; he ‘parted too with his
peace of mind’ (p. 2). Gibbon, however, is not to blame for his regression from
moral civilization to animal nature. He is not free, therefore he is not
morally responsible for his action. The story implies that moral judgement cannot
be applied when there is no freedom. Beelzebub, too, is not to blame for
expanding his domination and changing his owner’s life. The title of the story
puns on the word ‘dogged’. Beelzebub is dogged, that is, obstinate in having
its own way. Gibbon is also dogged by his misfortune.

From this an implicit
binary opposition appears between determinism and the doctrine of free will.
Religious and scientific determinism weigh heavily on Saki’s
story. Farrell writes: ‘Today we assume, with some warrant, that social forces,
social factors, social pressures and tendencies play a role similar to that
played by the Gods, by Fate and Nemesis , in ancient Greece.’[19]
The story tells us that ‘The working of inexorable laws sterilized the chance
of Gibbon’s emancipation’ (p.2) The term ‘inexorable laws’ echoes August Comte
(1798- 1857) who believed that society and universe were connected through the
inexorable workings of changeless natural laws. The story’s plot unfolds the
events according to strictly deterministic principles. Gibbon is a ‘fate-driven
dissipator’. When the dog settles into a room and
refuses to leave, the proprietor tells Gibbon that it ‘seems as if it was meant
like’(p.3) and Gibbon takes ‘alarm at the idea of resisting the possible
workings of a higher power’(p.3).

“Dogged” is a parody of
religious determinism. There is no question of ethical choice in the story
since buying Beelzebub was imposed on Gibbon. According to Christianity, God
permitted a certain freedom of action to Satan, so that he might tempt and
plague men. God wanted people to resist the devil by being alert and avoiding
moral complacencies. If there were no tempter to resist, they couldn’t achieve
their moral deserts. The fact that Beelzebub is a commodity in the church bazaar
shows the indispensable place of the devil in the divine design of salvation.
The story uses the biting vigour of satire to mock the church, because it keeps
Satan alive as an integral part of the church doctrine to frighten people from
sin and lead them to virtue. Satan’s role is described as ‘an angel of God, an
executive organ of the supreme deity’ … as an adversary to man (not to God!)’[20]
However, in the story, man can’t escape the sequence of events and their
causes. The compelling power of causal factors in human affairs denies the
freedom of the will. He is completely determined and fated even in his escape
from that self. Gibbon cannot liberate himself from Beelzebub, everything in
Gibbon’s life shows his amusement with his ‘moral slump’. He pursues evil in
the form of Beelzebub everywhere, and the final effect of evil is a pathetic
helplessness. From Milton to Goethe, writers who wrote about the devil tried to overcome the
difficulty of unconscious representation of the devil as the hero of the story,
and the Satanic hero still exists in literature as an attractive figure. Saki deliberately makes Beelzebub more powerful than
Gibbon. Instead of convincing the reader of the moral nobility of man, he shows
cynical insight into human weakness by asserting Satan’s power over Gibbon and
reducing his moral state. Beelzebub hardly needs to corrupt or tempt him.
Gibbon is passive enough to follow him easily into a nihilistic life, isolated
and estranged from his friends, living with a feeling of futility.

In the course of the story Gibbon has two
encounters with women. First, in the beginning of the story it is a bishop’s
wife who sells Beelzebub to Gibbon; second, towards the end of the story, after
he is enslaved to the dog, he meets a woman in the café who has a magnificent
ostrich feathers boa. The woman introduces sensuality and sin-consciousness
into Gibbon’s life. Both may be alluding to Eve and the fall of man. [21]
(In this case, Gibbon may be regarded as Adam).The woman’s ‘boa of ostrich
feathers’ (p.5) can be read as a reference to serpent.Beelzebub is attracted by the soft shimmering
of the lady’s attire and is entangled in the feathers. As HannesVatter writes the feathers are reminiscent of
Lucifer’s origin and seem to have been a common apparel for stage devil,
reminding of their former angelic nature.[22]
These two trick Gibbon into sin. The bishop’s wife does this by bullying him to
take possession of the dog, and the woman in the café does this by kissing him
at the end. Despite Gibbon’s initial resistance, he succumbs to the allure. He
overcomes the internal, as well as the social conflict between desire and
taboo, his enthralment being combined with sensual pleasure.

Saki
brings together scientific and religious determinism in his work. Gibbon is a
puppet. He is at the mercy of nature and far from having any control over it.
Even if the story is interpreted on a realistic level, it is clear that man is
not distinguished as a higher being. Unlike the religious belief that animals
were created to serve the purposes of man, they appropriate man to their
purposes in Saki’s fiction. According to medieval
Christian doctrine, the chain of being ascends from animals through man to the
angels and God. ‘And out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the
field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them to Adam to see what he would
call them: And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name
thereof’ (Genesis 2: 19). When God created the first man and woman, He told them
to exercise ‘dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air,
and over every living thing that moveth’.(Genesis 1: 28)
Saki, however, lived in an age when evolutionary
theories put an end to human-dominated hierarchy by placing the monkey as kin
to man. Saki is not satisfied with an egalitarian
view which includes humankind among the beasts. He puts humans at the mercy of
animals that are represented as being more intelligent than humans. Saki’s treatment of animal and human rejects the claim that
man has a superior moral position. As I have already noted, choosing the name
Gibbon blurs human and animal. At the same time, Gibbon can also be read as the
helpless victim of supernatural forces of good and evil. He is utterly helpless
before the diabolical power of devil that is entrapping and seducing him.

Saki’s
characters are wholly submerged in their milieux and
their fates are determined by circumstances of environment. The natural order
is not beneficent to man because its destructive aspects are not controlled.
Man is subject to the causal processes of nature in every regard. In this
respect, Saki’s story should also be read in the
light of naturalism. Naturalism was an aesthetic movement in nineteenth and
early twentieth century. The main influences were Darwin’s biological
theories, Comte’s application of scientific ideas to the study of society and Tain’s application of deterministic theories to literature.
Its outstanding figure was Zola who published ThereseRaquin in 1867. The Naturalists adapted natural
sciences, especially, the Darwinian view of nature to literature and art. Zola
applied the Darwinian view of man as an animal whose action was determined by
his heredity and environment. As a literary movement naturalism was developed
out of realism to represent reality without moral judgement.Since ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are conditioned by
forces beyond human control, they are not susceptible of moral judgement. The
assumption of scientific determinism led naturalistic authors to represent the
characters in fiction as helpless products of environment. Thus, for example, HippolyteTaine (1828-93), who
popularized Darwin’s ideas in France and was a major influence on Zola,
attributed human behaviour to the interplay of ‘race’(heredity), ‘milieu’
(environment), and ‘moment’ (immediate circumstances)[23]In Zola’s novels the free will of the
characters is radically reduced and their physiological and psychological
dispositions, under the pressure of environment or circumstances, are
responsible for moulding the individual and determining his acts.

Like Naturalistic
writers, Saki emphasizes man’s instinctual nature
rather than his moral or rational qualities. He subjects his characters to the
overpowering effects of environment and at the same time deprives them of free
choice to show how helpless they are. Saki’s
characters are motivated by strong instinctual desires from within and
oppressed by social conventions from without. Similar to what is seen in a
naturalistic fiction, every event in Saki’s story is
the outcome of its antecedents and its surroundings. What occurs is the product
of earlier occurrences. What HippolyteTaine terms ‘the moment’ or ‘immediate circumstance’ is
introduced as chance in Saki’s story.

II

The influence of naturalism is obvious in “The Remoulding of GrobyLington”, the last story in
Saki’sThe Chronicles of Clovis which was
published in 1911.[24]Saki presents man and nature, or man and animal, as
one without any distinction. The story represents a naturalistic view of man as
an animal subject to natural inclination. It concentrates particularly on how
environmental factors determine man’s behaviour. At the same time, man is seen
as part of nature to which he is bound by his animal instinct. The story
indicates that man is a pure product of his environment, and therefore the view
of moral choice or free will is reduced to pure determinism as is expressed in
naturalism. Saki is specifically interested in
determinism which results from environment and the pressure of the present
moment.

Groby’s
awareness of his surrounding and of himself comes to him when he notices that
his caricature, drawn by one of his nephews, resembles his parrot. He resents
the idea of his similarity to the bird and decides to get rid of the parrot. As
he ponders over his similarity to his pet, the sketch gives him an unwilling
sense of identification and oneness with his pet. He comes in touch with the
animal part of his nature that had been hidden by civilization. Here we
confront again the theme of regression and degeneration instead of progression
or regeneration. Groby’s change and adaptation is not
towards perfection. He is not evolving towards something better, but is being
reduced to the level of an animal. Groby’s lack of
any independent self makes him change personality and identify himself with
every new pet he owns. Each successive pet awakens in Groby
a sense of self based on unconscious association to which he surrenders. This
can explain why he does not hate the monkey for killing his favourite parrot.
‘A few hours earlier the tragic end which had befallen his parrot would have
presented itself to him as a calamity; now it arrived almost as a polite
attention on the part of Fate.’ (p.226). Groby
attributes it to Fate, which adds to the deterministic aspect of the story.

Groby’s
pattern of life is transferred with the arrival of a monkey.Like Gibbon in “Dogged”, Groby’s
life is dominated more by chance than by rational order and control.An example of this is Groby’s
struggle with a pianist. Groby hears the pianist
snoring in the next room for about ‘two and a quarter minutes’ and then he
can’t bear it. During the struggle that follows, Groby’s
candle is overturned and causes a fire. Although Groby
is responsible for the lighting of the fire, ironically he is considered to
have rescued the pianist. As a further irony “The Royal Humane Society
life-saving medal” is given to Groby, a man who has
degenerated into a savage beast. The irony of the situation in which Groby is given a medal while he is in fact responsible for
the accident, also parodies the comradeship and self-preservation promoted by
social ethics. The story is cynical about the idea that brotherhood and
cooperation are man’s instinctive responses to a threatening natural world and
that moral sense is rooted in man’s instinct.

The implicit message of the story regarding the struggle
between Groby and the pianist might be a parody of
the ideas of Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921). In his book
Mutual Aid (1902), Kropotkin argued that
despite the Darwinist concept of the survival of the fittest, cooperation
rather than conflict is the chief factor in the evolution of the species. After
providing abundant examples of mutual aid among animals, savages and
barbarians, and amongst modern associations, he concludes:

It is especially in the domain of ethics
that the dominating importance of the

mutual aid principle appears in full. That
mutual aid is the real foundation of our

How then can we judge Groby morally when
his nature is purely shaped by an environment over which he has no control? The
story shows him to be deprived of freedom of choice, and therefore absolved of
moral responsibility for his action. Groby is admired
for something of which he had no choice and no knowledge.

Saki
presents his characters as types comparable to species of animals. Animal
imagery in the story emphasizes this comparison: ‘bird-like scrutiny’ (p. 224),
‘parrot- talk’ (p. 225), ‘monkey language’ (p. 228), ‘parrot-like existence’
(p. 225), ‘ape-like rage’ (p. 230). These images indicate the animal dimension
and bestial side of human nature.Saki shows men to be at the mercy of their instincts.

Man is defined as a social animal, but another ironic
aspect of the story is that the social environment in which Groby
lives consists of animals. This story is prefaced by a quotation: ‘A man is
known by the company he keeps’[26]
However, to begin with, Groby is described as a man
who prefers ‘the seclusion of his own house’ (p.224) to the company of his
brother and his family whom he visits unwillingly. We are told that he ‘forgot
or ignored the existence of his neighbour kinsfolk’ (p.224), and that Groby doesn’t like to ‘sacrifice his comforts and
inclinations on the altar of family sociability’ (p. 224). Thus, he pays them a
‘hurried pilgrimage’ (p.224) every six months to escape the accusation of
neglecting his brother’s family; and yet, he is described as a ‘good-natured,
kindly dispositioned man’ (p. 224) At the same time,
the story ironizes religious and moral obligations
through the use of words such as ‘altar’, ‘pilgrimage’ or ‘sacrifice’. As the
story proceeds, the ‘company’ he keeps is first a parrot, then a monkey and
later, a tortoise. If ‘man is known by the company he keeps’, then Groby’s animal companions point to an important aspect of
his character. He has an animal self which overwhelms his social self. He is
already alienated from the social structure and his relatives and neighbours.
His fundamental attachment to his pets places his life more in the animal
kingdom than in the human realm. He reverts to an animal level, unable to
control his instinct. As a repeated theme in Saki’s
stories, society thwarts man and cuts him off from his awareness of his
connections to non-human nature.

Groby’s growing alienation makes him hostile to the outside world which
eventually evolves into overthrowing a respectable civilized life. He begins an
animal-like rebellion against his fellows, while he himself precipitates into
isolation and egoism. He becomes asocial and a supreme egotist.His strange behaviour increases the repulsion
between him and his neighbours who regard him as insane. It leads him to commit
acts of savagery. He gnashes his teeth at a servant and throws another servant
half-naked into a bush, although the servant had considered ‘the arrival of Groby with relief, as promising moral and material support’
(p. 228) He throws lozenges at a lady in church, and attacks a pianist.Alienation, the isolation of the individual,
and anxiety about man’s loneliness in the universe were themes that always
attracted Saki and appeared in many of his later
stories, like “The Lost Sanjak”(1910) and
“The Hounds of Fate” (1911). Saki’s main
characters are often not as much representatives of society as individuals
apart from it.

“The Remoulding of GrobyLington” draws upon evolutionary theory to represent man’s
place in nature and to expose his paradoxical state after the advent of
evolutionary theories. Groby’s change appears to be a
dramatic transformation which simply speeds up the evolutionary idea of gradual
change. As demonstrated earlier, Saki never
establishes any hierarchical differentiation between human and animal. What
distinguishes Groby from his monkey? What
distinguishes the two species? One answer to this question is to be found in
the work of George J. Romanes, a friend of Darwin who
published Animal Intelligence in 1886. There he refers to what Darwin calls ‘the
principle of imitation’:

It is proverbial that monkeys carry this principle to ludicrous
lengths, and they are

the only animals which imitate for the mere sake of imitation, as
has been

observed by Desor, though an exception
ought to be made in favour of talking

birds. The psychology of imitation is difficult of analysis, but it
is remarkable as

well as suggestive that it should be confined in its manifestations
to monkeys and

certain birds among animals, and to the lower mental levels among
men.[27]

Saki’s
characterization of Groby is parodic
confirmation of these ideas. In Saki’s story it is
not a monkey, but a human being who imitates. There are three different kinds
of imitation in the story: physical, linguistic and behavioural. First Groby notices that he resembles his parrot. After the death
of the parrot he owns a monkey and imitates it. Even his language is
‘parrot-talk’ and ‘monkey-language’. After the death of the monkey his brother
brings him a tortoise and Groby becomes as slow as a
tortoise. Saki’s use of the monkey and the parrot in
the story might even suggest his familiarity with Animal Intelligence. Darwin writes:

The principle of imitation is strong in
man, and especially in man in a barbarous

state. Desor
has remarked that no animal voluntarily imitates an action performed

by man, until in the ascending scale we
come to monkeys, which are well-known

Darwin here talks
about the ascending scale to monkeys. He shows a similar sense of hierarchy
when he says that the principle of imitation is more pronounced in so-called
barbarous man than in civilized men.Darwin also
discusses ‘the homologies which he [man] presents with the lower animals [..….]
the reversions to which he is liable’ according to which men can be placed ‘in their
proper position in the zoological series. We thus learn that man is descended
from a hairy quadruped […..] This creature would have been classed amongst
[.….] monkeys.’[29] From
this, the question of classification emerges. Groby
commits acts of savagery. Is Groby more like a monkey
or a barbarous man? Groby has reversions to his
earlier likeness but what is his place in the zoological series? Saki’s answer or representation of his character shows that
he is more like a monkey, through his extreme parody of the logic of Darwinian
thinking.

The role of language as a means of communication and as
something which distinguishes man from animals is an important element of the
story. The choice of aparrot as a pet
is obviously significant. Man is a talking animal; and the only animal that can
imitate man’s speech is the parrot. But Groby’s
communication with his neighbours is described as no better than parrot-talk:

What was the sum total of his conversation
with chance-encountered neighbours?

came to his mind, remarks that were
certainly not the mental exchange of human

intelligences, but mere empty parrot-talk.
One might as well salute one’s

acquaintances with “Pretty Polly. Puss,
puss, miaow!” (p. 225)

It is implied that social
language is phatic and shallow. It fails man in
establishing a proper communication. Saki’s
characters use language in a way which is merely phatic,
conventional and imitative.

Munro’s pen name, “Saki”, is
the name of a group of monkeys in tropical South
America.[30]
Tom Sharpe and Will Self identify Saki with Groby’s monkey[31].
But, as we all know, an artist does something that an animal is unable to do.
He uses language in a way which is not merely phatic.
In Saki’s case, he writes short stories to critique
the society. The story can function as a source of revelation to give the
reader a new sense of vision, to see himself differently in his relationship to
his environment, his neighbours, his pets and his relatives. Groby’s awareness of himself comes to him when he notices
his caricature, thus art is represented in the story as the instrument by which
a sophisticated form of communication and self-reflexivity takes place.

III

There are many similarities between this story and “Dogged”, published
twelve years earlier, and to some extent “Dogged” anticipates the themes in
“The Remoulding of GrobyLington”.
In both stories chance as a governing factor behind the story’s events
intervenes and brings man and animal face to face. The animal disrupts the calm
life of its otherwise innocent owner and stimulates the dormant bestial
instinct within his nature. In each case the acquisition of a new pet makes the
central character aware of his animal self. The reader sees what they are
first, then what they become, and is conscious of the dramatic disparity
between the two. Both stories deal with the difficulty of making moral choices
in a deterministic world, “Dogged” emphasizes religious and scientific
determinism; “The Remoulding of GrobyLington” emphasizes biological and environmental
determinism. Grobby and Gibbon are both tragic
characters as well as comic heroes. After acquiring the pet they are guided
solely by instinct, unable to deny their instinctual desires. Each story sets
up a balanced opposition within itself. The two stories together form a
matching pair. In both the reader sees the overlap and confusion between human
and animal. Civilization is confronted with and replaced by nature. In both
stories what seems to be catastrophic first, turns out to be easily
accommodated and becomes part of the identity of the protagonist. Both stories
deal with the subject in a purely ironic way and both are open-ended. The
comparison between human and non-human, or between humanity and animality has been a source of deep interest for Saki from his early fiction. His human characters are on
the borderline between the human and the animal kingdom. But “Dogged” is
preoccupied with good and evil, whereas “The Remoulding of GrobyLington” is preoccupied with right and wrong, a
distinction which is more difficult to perceive. The story of Groby, published four years before Saki’s
death indicates that Saki’s pessimistic attitude and
his cynicism of human nature and naturalistic determinism increased towards the
end of his writing career. In the character of Groby,
Saki reduces the gap between animal and human, and
sharpens the antagonism between man and society (not between man and animal).
His later writing shows a more cynical disbelief in the perfectibility of man.
But Saki also indicates that the behaviour of human
beings is too complex to be understood either by natural scientists who, ignoring
man’s spiritual needs, regarded him as a species, or by moralists who ignored
man’s instinctual needs.

As we have seen, “The Remoulding of GrobyLington”is also related to Darwinian
principles through its reference to adaptability with nature. The monkey that
is brought from the Western Hemisphere dies ‘under the influence of a northern climate’ (p.230). It is
unfit for survival in a new environment. Also,Saki’s
terminology in “Dogged”indicates his familiarity with evolutionary
theory. Words such as ‘struggle’, ‘laws of environment’ and ‘canine’ are words
used in scientific texts of biology or natural science and were commonplace in
evolutionary controversy.

In his article ‘The Brilliant Young Man’ Saki writes:

Here is another fine antithesis, taken
from another ‘brilliant young man’ apropos of

the writings of the late Professor Huxley:
‘His was an age of faith without belief,

ours of belief without faith’[…...] For my
part, I have thrown away all dull books

of crabbed philosophy, and deeper than did
every plummet sound I have drowned

The mocking attitude towards Huxley and the explicit dissatisfaction
with Darwin indicate that Saki regarded evolution as
running backward. He regards evolutionary theories as lacking any permanent
scientific basis, calling them ‘crabbed philosophy’.

Saki
established an ironic distance from the views generated by the opinion making
classes, but as an intellectual he was highly receptive to the new ideas from
the realm of science. The tension between faith and science, or between belief
and knowledge was not new, it is seen in Dr Faustus too, but evolutionary
theories intensified this tension.Saki’s painting a vivid picture of two characters, one with
the name of an ape (Gibbon), the other behaving like an ape (Groby), indicates his view toward evolution. Saki was aware of the incongruity between religious ideas
and the theory of evolution. He believed that morality is incompatible with the
brute origin of man. If man is only an intensified animal, there is no way to
moralize the connection between evolutionary ideas, social theory and Christian
doctrine. For Saki, life was a struggle for existence
which was bound to end in man’s defeat because man’s life and his actions are
determined by environment. If we accept Darwin, the moral
sense will turn out to be a mere developed instinct. Saki
makes his characters (like Gibbon and Groby) give up
those motives by which people attempt to live noble and virtuous life. How can
man live with dignity and find order and meaning in a universe that forbids him
freedom? Moral views falsely assume in man a freedom he does not possess. Man
is biologically determined by instinct and externally determined by social
forces. He is reduced to the level of a will-less animal. In Saki’s stories there is no emphasis on man’s uniqueness in
the nature. Man is like an animal. He also lacks freedom of the will, and
therefore, he must not be held responsible for his action. Saki’s
characters are products of scientific determinism. The character’s action is a
chain, a causation in his personal life and linked to a vaster chain of
causation in the public world. His actions are not self-generated, but caused
instead by the external social or supernatural forces in the world outside the
self. The character’s change is attributed to his environment and not to
conscious choice.

[1]“Dogged”
is not in Saki’s complete edition. It appears in a an
edition selected by Peter Haining,ShortStories 2, Saki (London: Dent, 1983). All the page references are
from this book.

[3] There is another Arthemius in the history
of Christianity who was a bishop of Sens in the 6th
century.

[4] Hilary who is mentioned as Artemus’s
friend is also the name of a saint of 4th century. Since his friend
is called a ‘disciple’ in the story (p.6) Saki’sArtemus as a saint can be considered the founder of the
cult of instinct.

[15] Harriet Ritvo writes that in 19th
century some dogs were characterized as aristocratic, noting in this context
that the Fox-Terrier Chronicle (1883-1906) was the only
nineteenth-century periodical devoted to a single breed of dogs. It covered a
terrier ‘elite’ the way that newspapers and other periodicals covered human
high society.Cf. Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate: The English and Other
Creatures in the Victorian Age (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987)
89-90.

[16] In some parts of Britain,
for example in Cornwall, there are various tales of the Devil’s pack of Dandy (or Dando) dogs. www.indigogroup.co.uk/edge/bdogfl.htm

[21] In another story by Saki, “Eve and the
Forbidden Fruit” , which centres on the determinism of the original sin, Eve is
called ‘dogged’ because at first she refuses to eat the forbidden fruit and
then she yields. This story was published in Peter Haining’sShort Stories 2. On page xvi of the introduction Haining
writes that ‘it is an uncollected story by Saki,
discovered among his papers’, therefore, the date of the story is not known.

[24] All the page references included in the parenthesis in the text are
from The Complete Saki (London: Penguin,
1982). This story is one of the few that appeared in a collection without
having been published in a newspaper first.

[25] Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid, A Factor
of Evolution(London: Penguin Books, 1972) 250-51. Considering the
fact that Saki published The Rise of the Russian
Empire in 1900, and he was a correspondent in Russia in
1904, it is most probable that Saki was familiar with
the Russian Darwinists.

[26] Tom Sharpe attributes this quotation to Euripides.See Tom Sharpe, Introduction, The Best of Saki (London: Pan Books, 1976) p.13. This is the only
story in Saki’s collection which is prefaced by a
quotation.

This is a succinct
and very well-structured paper. The close readings of the two animal stories
are full of telling observations. These are all brought together in a lucid
and convincing synthesis about Saki's intellectual context and his grimly comic stance on
life.